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Ridic-zoo-lous


LevelTwoBard

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Friday, January 23rd. 2:30 PM.

 

Jamal first realized something was wrong when a colobus monkey stole his wallet.

 

The zookeeper chased after the little fellow with an exasperated sigh. Escapes were unusual, but he'd been around long enough to've seen a few; he'd just corral the monkey and have one of the others grab a catch-all pole. But the screaming that started a moment later, coming from the direction of the lakeside cafe, made him pause. There was a school group in there, he knew, and they'd probably get pretty excited by escaped monkeys. But this sounded like real panic, and that worried him. The wallet could wait.

 

He dashed back up the path in time to catch sight of Missy the hyena jumping on a thirty-something guy in a polo shirt, the fifth graders behind him screaming their lungs out. The zookeeper's blood ran cold - two simultaneous escapes was too much of a coincidence, especially in Freedom City. Charging forward, he kicked Missy in the side, then punched her in the snout when she turned to bite him. Whining, she backed off, and Jamal looped his arms under the teacher's and dragged him out into the dining area.

 

"Get into the bathrooms and lock the doors!" he yelled, and the kids scrambled to obey.

 

He looked behind him in time to see his coworker Shawn, his long black in utter disarray and tears of panic streaming down his face, being dragged up the steps and through the doors of the reptile house by a boa constrictor. "What the flying..." And then a spider monkey stole his watch, bounding away as Missy returned with friends. "Come on, man," he told the teacher, tapping the side of his face. "C'mon, you gotta wake up. Now would be good. Now would be real good!"

 

Snarling, teeth bared, the hyenas began to close in...

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The third graders were starting to cry, and the antelope wouldn't let them leave.

 

Tammy had tried everything to get it to move. She'd run at it, yelling "shoo!", and it'd just stared at her. She'd thrown food behind it, bits of carrots and animal crackers they'd taken for a snack, and it hadn't budged. She'd even shoved it, but that had just caused a water buffalo to walk up beside it and ram her in the shoulder. The two animals completely filled the entrance to the sculpture garden, where the kids hadn't really wanted to go when there were real animals to see anyway, big and blank and way too close.

 

She took a calming breath. "Okay," she told her class, putting on her best smile. "Sit in a circle. We're going to play duck, duck, goose!" The water buffalo snorted, the force of its breath sending her hair haloing around her face. Go to the zoo, the principal had said. Kids love the zoo. He was going to get an earful when she got out of this. But she was keeping it together; the kids were relatively calm, and seemed to be getting into the game. Tammy was determined to ensure that, when someone came to help, they'd find the class in good order.

 

But she couldn't blame them for descending back into screaming, crying panic when gorillas started dropping off computers all around them...

Edited by LevelTwoBard
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Gordon was going to have to start thinking up better excuses.

 

Even when the precinct was lit up like Christmas, and it was, Computer Crimes didn't tend to budge. Everyone but him was certified for tasers, firearms, the whole nine yards, but they were almost never called on to use them; they sat in their quiet corner and pursued their cases unless Omega was invading again or the building was on fire. So Gordon took another coffee break, and as his motorcycle raced toward the Hanover Zoo he was pretty sure that it was going to be another suspiciously long one. Police chatter was not optimistic about this one; it was weird, even for Freedom.

 

If the zoo really was going wild, there was no telling what kind of carnage was going on inside; Uplink had tried to tap into the zoo's security cameras, but the power was out. Priority one, then, was to get it back on; security systems would help put an end to the chaos. Pulling up the zoo's blueprints from the city archives, Gordon spotted the main generators: beneath the reptile house. He winced; not a tremendous fan of snakes. But the place was pretty close to the south entrance; it shouldn't be too much trouble to reach. He cut the data stream just in time to avoid rear-ending a station wagon.

 

He really needed to either learn how to focus on two kinds of sight at once or to stop using his powers while driving.

 

The original plan was to zip right through the south entrance and tear up the grass straight to the reptile house, but that plan went by the wayside when Uplink found the way blocked. A jumbled pile of wallets, phones, jewelry, and small merchandise was spilling out of the south gift shop, and a steady stream of chattering monkeys and exotic birds were dropping more and more stuff into it. Gordon pulled his motorcycle over, trying to figure out what the hell he was looking at. Animals escaping and going crazy was one thing; animal thieves on this scale, that was something else. Something deliberate.

 

He was glad he'd stopped a little ways back when the lions came around the corner. A pair of them, a male and a female, roared a challenge, their muscular bodies longer and taller than his bike. Breathing a stream of distinctly unheroic words as he reached for his techstaff, Gordon backed his motorcycle up slowly, the big cats padding after him. There was a stretch of parking lot between them, ravenous jaws and wicked claws against the crackling electricity of Uplink's stun-staff. He revved the engine, and they answered with another bone-rattling roar.

 

"Apparently," Gordon murmured, settling himself low in the seat, "today is the day I joust against a lion."

Edited by LevelTwoBard
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Daphne had been spending her day filming various animals for her media course, nature documentaries was the project she’d been assigned. Animals were a fascinating anyway there thought were a little fuzzy, mostly just emotions and desires, but sharply focused compared to human complicated twisting minds. She’d been watching one of the Boa Constrictors when the general hue and cry began to echo round the zoo.

 

“I don’t suppose you have anything to say that’s helpful?†she asked the sleeping snake “That’s if you can understand my Parseltongue.â€

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Due to a series of teacher meetings, this Friday was a half day at Claremont, which Casey Blankenship used to visit the Hanover Zoo; she eagerly took lots of pictures with her smartphone, clicking away like a typical tourist. But then her stomach grumbled, and she unfolded her map of the park, and noted the position of the the Lakeside Cafe.

"Ooh, I hope they have cheese fries!"

But then her keen eyesight noticed something very disturbing; there were several animals lose in the park! And what was even more disturbing, they seemed to be working together to a common criminal purpose! Casey quickly darted behind a kiosk as she unslung her daypack, and a few seconds later, Miracle Girl emerged! Her costume was still a work in progress; for now, she wore a navy-blue track suit with white pinstripes, along with red cycling gloves and a matching pair of Doc Martens.

She hovered in the air, blonde hair billowing around her face as she tried to figure out where to start; then she heard several children scream and the odd 'laughter' of hyenas from near the cafe, and her course was set. She flew towards the structure, staying ten feet off the ground until she got her bearings.

"Hang on, help is coming!"

Edited by Heritage
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